The Fifties:

1957

Ted Hughes's first collection of poems including such classics as »The Thought-Fox«, »The Hawk in the Rain«, »The Jaguar« and »Wind«. Reading this book side by side with later collections makes apparent that this book presents a very young Hughes.

The Sixties:

1960

Lupercal collected such poems as »Hawk Roosting«, »The Bull Moses«, »View of a Pig«, »An Otter«, »Thrushes« and »Pike«. The title refers to the Roman fertility festival of the Lupercalia, held on February 15.

1961

Ted Hughes's first children's book. It is dedicated to Frieda, Sylvia's and Ted's then newly born daughter. It is a book of heavily-rhyming poems in which Hughes describes imagined family members. Over the years Meet My Folks! has undergone revision in that poems where added to and dropped from it. Thus, the first American edition has the additional poems »My Uncle Mick«, »My Aunt Flo«, »My Granny« and »My Own True Family« while »My Grandpa« and »Grandma« have been dropped. The Faber paperback edition has the additional poem »My Fairy Grandmother«.

The first collection of stories and creation tales for children. Its genesis goes back to the fifties (!) since when versions of it had repeatedly been rejected by publishers. It may be for that reason, that some of its stories are much like a mix of Aesopian fables and Kipling's Just So Stories while others point to the genuine direction of Hughes's later Creation tales. The book contains such classic tales for children as »How the Whale Became« and »How the Bee Became«. It is also available as an AudioBook.

1967

Ted Hughes's first collection for adults since 1962. Some of its poems, like the title poem, go back to the late fifties and early sixties. Wodwo collects poems, short stories (like »The Rain Horse«, »The Harvesting«, and »Sunday«) and a radio play called »The Wound«. It also contains an author's note which is very popular among critics, stating that poems, play and stories are intended to be read together »as parts of a single work«. Among the most popular poems in this book are: »Second Glance at a Jaguar« (ref. to »The Jaguar« in Hawk in the Rain), »Gog«, »Out«, »New Moon in January«, »Song of a Rat«, »Skylarks«, »The Howling of Wolves«, »Pibroch«, »Gnat-Psalm«, »Thistles«, »Full Moon and Little Frieda« and »Wodwo«.

This book collects pieces from Ted Hughes's work for the BBC in which he talks about poetry and encourages the listener/reader to try and write their own poems, stories and even novels. As a book about writing it is equally well suited for creative writing classes and for literary criticism. And it is a very good and interesting read.

The essays tell much about Hughes's approach. In most of them he uses poems of other writers as well as some of his own to illustrate the points made. Two entire chapters are dedicated to collections of poetry for children: Meet My Folks! (including Nessie) and The Earth-Owl. Other poems discussed include »The Thought-Fox« and »View of a Pig«.

For some unknown reason, three essays are missing from the American edition: »Writing a Novel: Beginning«, »Writing a Novel: Going On«, and »Words and Experience«.
Two excerpts were published in Winter Pollen. Recordings of two of the talks (»Capturing Animals« and »Learning to Think« ) were briefly available on vinyl record in 1971.

1968

Illustrated by Robert Nadler. New York: Harper & Row, 1968, as The Iron Giant,
later editions illustrated by Dirk Zimmer.

The Iron Man is probably Hughes's most well-known book for children. A heavily adapted version of the basic story was made into an award winning animated movie which nevertheless stays true to the redemptive, healing drift of the book.

The book tells the story of a little boy, Hogarth, who lives in a rural community which is confronted by an enormous Iron Man. A wonderful read.The Iron Man is also available as an AudioBook, read by Ted Hughes.

1969

Seneca's Oedipus. Adapted by Ted Hughes .

London: Faber & Faber, 1969;
New York: Doubleday, 1972.

At the end of the sixties and in the early seventies Ted Hughes worked with Peter Brook's International Theatre Company, adapting and providing material for the company's experiments and rehearsal. The collaboration culminated in the productions of Oedipus and the unpublished Orghast. (Rumour has it that the Orghast script is lost.) Apparently, Hughes was also involved in the production of Peter Brook's movie King Lear.

See also A.C.H. Smith: Orghast at Persepolis (London: Methuen, 1972) for an account of the Orghast rehearsals and performances. Several books on Peter Brook do also include notes on Oedipus and the Orghast venture.

This is a collection of plays for children, originally conceived for radio. The American edition contains the additional play »Orpheus«.
The 2001 edition Collected Plays for Children does also include »Orpheus« plus the uncollected »The Pig Organ«.

See also »Alcestis«, an essay by Keith Sagar. [On-line essay available on this site]

Apart from Birthday Letters, Crow is probably Ted Hughes's most famous collection of poetry.

It seems that Crow grew out of an invitation by Leonard Baskin to write a few poems to accompany some of his drawings. In the process, Hughes found a very reduced by enormously powerful language.

The book tells of Crow's adventures and relates some of the songs and stories he makes up. During readings Hughes generally used to provide a narrative framework for the poems which has never been published in print.

In this framing story, God has a recurring dream, a nightmare. The nightmare »appears to God as a hand. And this hand [...] is also a voice [...]«, a laughing voice. It »comes the moment he falls asleep. This thing arrives and grabs him round the throat, and throttles him and lifts him out of his Heaven and rushes him through his universe and pushes him beyond his stars and then ploughs up the Earth with his face and throws him back into Heaven. [...] God cannot understand what there can be in his creation which – (after all he is responsible for every atom in it) – [...] is so strange to him and can be so hostile to him«. Eventually, God gets this »voice-hand« to speak, and »the speech is a terrible mockery of God's creation, particularly of the crown of his creation, which is Man«. So, there »begins a great debate in Heaven between God and his nightmare – about Man. And God is very defensive of Man. Man is a very good invention and a successful invention and, given the materials and the situation, he's quite adequate. The voice just continues with its mocking that Man is absolutely hopeless.
It so happens, that while the debate has been going on [...], Man [...] had sent up a representative to the Gates of Heaven. This representative had been knocking on the marble gates and God had been so preoccupied with his nightmare that he hadn't heard him. So this little figure was sitting in the Gate of Heaven waiting for God to hear him. And now the voice [...] asks this little figure to speak [...]. And it so happens that Man has sent this little figure up to ask God to take life back because men are fed up with it. God is enraged that Man has let him down in this way in front of the Demon, so he challenges the voice to do better – given the materials and the whole set up – just to do better – produce something better than Man.
This is what the voice has been negotiating for. So, with a great howl of delight, he plunges down into matter and God turns Man round and pushes him back down into the World.«
So Crow is created and God, who feels pity for this ugly little creature, shows him around Creation. But Crow gets involved, plays about and more often then not messes things up. So God gets fed up with him.
Gradually it becomes clear that Crow is looking for his Creatrix who is also to become his intended bride, who is also a part of himself.

Due to tragic personal circumstances, Crow remained a fragment of only about two thirds of the story. Hughes saw himself unable to finish the story with a happy ending which he could not verify in his own life.

[The account of the background story was adapted from »Difficulties of a Bridegroom«, in Bertrand Rougé (ed): Q/W/E/R/T/Y 9, 1999; I am also quoting from Ann Skea's transcript of a reading at the Adelaide Festival (http://ann.skea.com).]

The American edition has seven additional poems. The 1972 edition has six of these plus »Crowcolour« – »The Lovepet« appeared only in the American edition. Subsequent public editions follow the edition of 1972. The limited edition of 1973 (with the Baskin drawings) included three additional poems. Further poems appeared in The Achievement of Ted Hughes, in magazines and several limited publications.

1975

Season Songs is a sequence of poems loosely following events in the seasonal cycle of the year. It is based on the earlier Five Autumn Songs for Children's Voices (1968) which Hughes wrote for a performance by school children at a festival.

Season Songs is a beautiful little book for children and adults alike. Several subsequent editions exist to which poems have been added or from which pieces have been omitted.

The most complete is the English edition of 1985, missing ›only‹ the following poems: »The Defenders« (in American edition), »The Stag« and »Two Horses« (both in 1976 edition).

1976

This book collects the poems of The Earth-Owl and Other Moon People and the limited edition Earth-Moon, published by the Rainbow Press in 1976, and illustrated by Hughes himself. It has a much wider range of topic and tone than The Earth-Owl.

A ›revised‹ edition simply titled Moon-Whales, splendidly illustrated by Chris Riddell, was published by Faber & Faber in 1988. It omits six poems from the Baskin edition of 1976.

1977

Gaudete tells the story of Reverend Lumb who is abducted by spirits into the underworld. His place on earth is taken by a double made of an oak log. The main part of the poems narrates the story of this double who, for one thing, transforms the local Women's Institute into a coven.

The »Epilogue« of the book presents poems written by the ›real‹ Lumb upon his return from the underworld.

1978

This is a collection of poems for children which takes its title from one of the poems from Moon-Whales also included here. In spite of its name, it does not belong with The Earth-Owl and Moon-Whales. The other poems were either previously uncollected or come from a variety of books for adults and children. Some of them have subsequently been republished in collections for adults.

The scope of the collection is astounding. It ranges from playful childly material like »Nessie« and the Moon poems to ›nature‹ and ›animal poetry‹ as »Coming Down Through Somerset«, to material from the Crow context like »Amulet« and »Horrible Song«.

As such, Moon-Bells shows the full breadth of Ted Hughes's writing for children. It presents an author who takes children seriously and doesn't underestimate their ability to grasp complexities like natural cycles of life and death.

Cave Birds continues the kind of quest story apparent from such material as »The Wound«, Gaudete and Crow. A first, limited edition appeared in 1975. All later editions are heavily revised and very different from this.

Cave Birds tells of the purification of a protagonist in what parallels stages of an alchemical process of transforming base material (sometimes referred to as »bronze« in the book) into a refined substance.

Possibly the most well-known poem in the book is »Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days«, which Hughes re-incorporated into the Crow version on the Faber/Penguin cassette, where it originally belonged. In her book Ted Hughes.

1979

Remains of Elmet presents Ted Hughes's first collaboration with a photographer, Fay Godwin.

It is a celebration of the area where he spent the first seven years of his childhood. The poems reflect on its landscape, environment, and its people who are said to live in the remains of the Celtic kingdom of Elmet.

It is a very beautiful book but Hughes seems to have felt that some of the photographs and poems did not go together well enough, and that the original book dwelt on the idea of the ›remains‹ too much. Thus, the 1994 revised edition published as Elmet is virtually presents a different book.

Moortown collects several (semi-)independent projects and several uncollected poems into one volume. The book is frequently confused with Moortown Diary, which collects only the ›farming poems‹.
Many of the poems in Moortown had been published previously only in limited editions. The major sequences of poems making this volume are:

The Eighties:

1981

Under the North Star collects poems on animals who live north of the 49th parallel. It is a very beautiful book. The illustrations are in water-colour. Aiming at children it will hold much for the adult reader, and indeed several of its poems have subsequently appeared in collections for adults.

1982

The Rattle Bag.

Edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.
Faber & Faber, 1982

An Anthology of Poems for children. The choice of material is very broad, making this anthology suitable for many settings and audiences (school, home, ... — children, young adults, adults) or just for reading from end to end. The poems are sorted according to broad topics.

1983

The Achievement of Ted Hughes.

Edited by Keith Sagar.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983.

Though a collection of critical pieces on Hughes, the book contains thirty uncollected poems.
The Table of Contents gives the following list (Dates in brackets are dates of composition supplied by Ted Hughes; dates of first publication in square brackets; ›unpublished‹ refers to the time of publication of The Achievement of Ted Hughes):

River is Ted Hughes's second collaboration with a photographer. Poems and photographs seem more loosely related than in Remains of Elmet, and subsequent editions are without photographs.

The book continues with what is often called Hughes's ›nature poetry‹, as collected in such books as Moortown Diary and Remains of Elmet. The focus is, however, is more strongly on rivers and other bodies of water and the animals that live in and around them.

Probably the best-known poem from the collection is »An October Salmon«. Until his death Ted Hughes had been a passionate angler and conservationist. An interview published in 1999 in the anglers's magazine Wild Steelhead & Salmon seems to date back to the time when several of the River poems were written.

Three Books, Faber & Faber 1993, has a revised version without the photographs.

1984

What is the Truth? is a book closely connected with Ted Hughes's involvement in a project called »Farms for City Children« set up by Clare and Michael Morpurgo in the 1970s.

The book tells the story of God who summons sleeping villagers to present their perceptions of certain animals to His son. Naturally, the presentations are conflicting so that the question arises what the Truth might be. The villagers' descriptions are given in verse and Reg Lloyd has provided very beautiful illustrations for the book.

The poems in the book continue in the vein of Hughes's ›animal/nature poetry‹ for children as have previously appeared in Moon-Bells, Under the North Star or Season Songs. Several of them have subsequently appeared in collections for adults.

Two further collections grew from collaborations with Reg Lloyd and belong in the context of Hughes's involvement with Farms for City Children: The Cat and the Cuckoo (1987) and The Mermaid's Purse (1993), both of which appeared in limited editions and have subsequently been re-published with different sets of illustrations.

1986

Ffangs tells the story of a little vampire who wants to be human and follows his adventures trying to achieve this goal. The story is told in an exciting mixture of verse and prose.

As the title suggests, it presents another quest for Truth (see What is the Truth? above). Very sadly, the story remained unfinished and no sequel exists . Though there is an announcement on the last page that Ffangs's adventures would be continued in »the next book«, I have not been able to find any material hinting at the conclusion of the Ffangs story.

Nevertheless, Ffangs is a very exciting read and Chris Riddell has provided an amazing set of illustrations. The story is also available as an AudioBook, read by Ted Hughes himself.

1988

Tales of the Early world is Hughes's second book of Creation Tales.
While How the Whale Became (the first collection with Creation Tales) contained several stories that were strongly reminiscent of Kipling and Aesop, Tales of the Early World takes the reader into an original Hughesian world.

The stories feature God, God's Mother, Woman and Man as major protagonists and are reminiscent of the world portrayed in the link narrative of Crow.

A very entertaining read. The third collection of Creation Tales is The Dreamfighter listed below.

Tales of the Early World is also available as an AudioBook, read by Ted Hughes.

Moon-Whales is the revised British edition of Moon-Whales and Other Moon Poems published by Viking in 1976. Yet, the revisions and the new set of illustrations render it virtually a different book. It omits six poems from the American edition.

The book is Hughes's second collaboration with Chris Riddell, the full impact of whose illustrations may only be experienced from the hard back (the paperback clips several images).

Moon-Whales collects poems from The Earth-Owl and the limited edition of Earth-Moon. It portrays creatures who inhabit a moon »at the bottom of our dreams« [Poetry in the Making] and events that occur there.

The poems range from nonsensically playful and plain funny to serious. A wonderful book.

1989

Wolfwatching reads like a continuing exploration of themes touched upon in books like Remains of Elmet and River. The book has a note on »The Black Rhino«, the American edition has an additional note on »On the Reservations«.

This is the trade edition of Moortown Elegies, which was published in a limited edition in 1978. The poems were also collected in Moortown.

The book contains notes on several poems not included in either of the previous editions. The poems in Moortown Diary are presented as a kind of »verse diary« Hughes kept at a time when he was farming in Devon with Carol Hughes's father Jack Orchard.

They are beautiful, moving pieces with a kind of unique raw energy. »February 17th«, »Ravens«, »Coming Down Through Somerset« and »The Day he Died« are among the better known poems from this collection.

Hughes investigates a single theme/conflict in Shakespeare's »mature plays« of which each play presents a variation. He traces the emergence of this them to the two long poems »Venus and Adonis« and »The Rape of Lucrece« and from there via Greek mythology back to Sumerian myth. Hughes links this theme/conflict to the social and religious pressures during Shakespeare's time, of which, he says, it provides a mirror image. It is a most fascinating argument that also says much about Hughes's work.

A sequel to a very popular book almost always sounds like a bad idea, like cashing in on the previous publication's fame, etc. The Iron Woman is Hughes's attempt to expand on the story of Hogarth and the Iron Man but bringing in a different perspective.

Since his children where little, he had been trying to create a work that focused on girls rather than boys. In effect, the Iron Woman is very different from the Iron Man. The book is much about conservation, human ignorance towards our destruction of nature. A solution is brought about only when the two children, Lucy and Hogarth and the two iron beings work together.

1994

This is a revised and expanded edition of Remains of Elmet — virtually a different book. Several poems have been added, others have been dropped and there have been changes in sequence. It seems that Hughes was unhappy with the match between some of the poems and photographs in the first edition. Also, as the shortened title indicates he seems to have shifted his focus away from dwelling on the ›remains‹ to celebrating »Elmet«.

The book also contains a new note on the historical/mythical Elmet. In 2000, Terry Gifford gave a presentation on major differences between the two Elmet books which has been collected in Alternative Horizons (ed. J. Moulin).

A collection of reviews, essays and articles and the unpublished story »The Burnt Fox«. Most of the articles were originally published in newspapers, magazines and journals, some of which are very hard to get.

1995

New Selected Poems: 1957—1994.

London: Faber & Faber, 1995.

This book had sections titled »Uncollected«, which included poems that were to appear in Birthday Letters three years later but went largely unnoticed. Some critics suspect, that Hughes was testing the waters. Moreover, the book reprinted several poems from the limited edition Capriccio (1990).

Difficulties of a Bridegroom collects most of Hughes's published short stories for adults, plus the radio play »The Wound« (from Wodwo) and one story previously published in a book for children.

The introduction gives some insight into the development of the early stories and the play, shedding light on such publications as Wodwo, Gaudete and Cave Birds. In contrast to what the title may suggest, this is not the complete body of short stories. The stories and the play in this collection are:

»The Deadfall« [prev. published in Ghostly Haunts],

»O'Kelley's Angel«,

»Snow« [prev. published in Wodwo],

»Sunday« [prev. published in Wodwo],

»The Rain Horse« [prev. published in Wodwo],

»The Harvesting« [prev. published in Wodwo],

»The Wound« [prev. published in Wodwo],

»The Suitor« [prev. published in Wodwo],

»The Head« [prev. published in »Bananas«].

Collected Animal Poems.

London: Faber & Faber, 1995.

The collection is dedicated to Hughes's sister and brother, Olwyn and Gerald.

Typical for collections by Ted Hughes, this has some of his poems originally published in collections for adults drift into collections of poems for children and vice versa. It comes with a subject index.

Volume 1: The Iron Wolf. Illustrated by Chris Riddell.

This book collects poems from several earlier publications in a beautiful little volume. Included are poems from:

1999

This is a newly illustrated version of the poems from the limited edition of 1993. There seems to have been another version from 1991, which Faber & Faber listed as Collected Animal Poems. The Mermaid's Purse (Hardback, ISBN: 0-571-16451-X), publication date »18 Nov 1991«. I have never seen this nor can I confirm its existence.

The 1999 edition drops the poem »Gull« (»What yanks upward your line of sight…«) and replaces it with an early Hughes poem »Gulls« (»Gulls are glanced from the cliff...«).

Flora McDonnell's illustrations are very beautiful but sadly not reproduced in colour.

Since the early nineties, Ted Hughes dedicated an increasing amount of effort to translations and work for theatre. This followed a period of much prose writing and editing and apparently was to prepare his return to writing poetry.

The Oresteia and Alcestis (below) are two publications that seem to have been very important to him, finished shortly before his death in 1998.

2003

This book republishes the stories from How the Whale Became, Tales of the Early World, The Dreamfighter. Originally, the editors seem to have planned the inclusion of a story published separately in Michael Morpurgo's (ed.) Muck and Magic (1995) and of a previously unpublished story. Though both are referred to in the publishing credits, they have not been included.

This »interim« publication aims at collection all of Hughes's published poems for adults. The book offers an astounding scope of previously hard-to-find material. It comes with extensive notes, listing, among other things, variants and details.

Nevertheless, a few poems are missing: »Crow Compromises« (1968), »Crow Fails« (1968), »The Advocate«, »Two Dreams in the Cell«, »Your Mother's Bones Wanted to Speak«, »She is the Rock«, all of which are collected in The Achievement of Ted Hughes, and »Football« (limited edition, 1995) as well as »Selling Cows at Bridgetown Farm, Iddesleigh« (This is Our Land ..., 1989).

The book collects most of Ted Hughes's poems for children. It contains all poems from The Mermaid's Purse, The Cat and the Cuckoo, Season Songs, Nessie the Mannerless Monster, Meet My Folks, What is the Truth, Under the North Star, and the moon poem collections (The Earth-Owl and Other Moon-People, Earth-Moon and Moon-Whales), as well as a few poems that appeared here and there in other collections. Strangely absent are several poems from the award-winning Moon-Bells.